This paper presents the initial results from the second WorldWide Web User Survey, which was advertised and made available to the Web user population for 38 days during October and November 1994. The survey is built on our architecture and Web technologies, which together offer a number of technical and surveying advantages. In particular, our architecture supports the use of adaptive questions, and supports methods for tracking users' responses across different surveys, allowing more in-depth analyses of survey responses. The present survey was composed of three question categories: general demographic questions, browsing usage, and questions for Web information authors. In addition, we added an additional, experimental category addressing users' attitudes toward commercial use of the Web and the Internet. In just over one month, we received over 18,000 total responses to the combined surveys. To the best of our knowledge, the number of respondents and range of questions make this survey the most reliable and comprehensive characterization of WWW users to date. It will be interesting to see if and how the user trends shown in our results change as the Web gains in global access and popularity.
Digital libraries populated with learning objects are becoming popular tools in the creation of instructional technologies. Many current efforts to create standard metadata structures that facilitate the discovery and instructional use of learning objects recommend a single, authoritative metadata record per version of the learning object. However, as we argue in this paper, a single metadata record Ð particularly one with ®elds that emphasize knowledge management and technology, while evading instructional issues Ð provides information insuf®cient to support instructional utilization decisions. To put learning objects to instructional use, users must examine the individual objects, forfeiting the supposed bene®ts of the metadata system. As a solution, we propose a system that includes multi-record, non-authoritative metadata focussed on the surrounding instructional context of learning objects.
This article presents a quasi-experimental study comparing the impact of two technologyrelated teacher professional development (TTPD) designs, aimed at helping junior high school science and mathematics teachers design online activities using the rapidly growing set of online learning resources available on the Internet. The first TTPD design (tech-only) focused exclusively on enhancing technology knowledge and skills for finding, selecting, and designing classroom activities with online resources, while the second (tech+pbl) coupled technology knowledge with learning to design problem-based learning (PBL) activities for students. Both designs showed large pre-post gains for teacher participants (N=36) in terms of self-reported knowledge, skills, and technology integration. Significant interaction effects show that teachers in the tech+pbl group had larger gains for self-reported knowledge and externally rated use of PBL. Three generalized estimating equation (GEE) models were fit to study the impact on students' (N=1,247) self reported gains in behavior, knowledge, and attitudes. In the resulting models, students of tech+pbl teachers showed significant increases in gain scores for all three outcomes. By contrast, students of tech-only teachers showed improved gains only in attitudes.
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